30 Under 30: The Brightest Young Stars In Video Games

Every year, the reporters at Forbes look for up-and-coming stars in the industries we cover. We search for people who are doing groundbreaking work, disrupting traditional business models, and establishing themselves as leaders. You can see the results today in a package of stories we call 30 Under 30. This feature consists of fifteen lists of people under the age of thirty, each of whom are changing the face of a different business. The industries we look at include music, finance, sports, healthcare and science… and of course, video games.

Our honorees include Palmer Luckey, the 21-year-old founder of Oculus VR. Virtual reality for the masses is no longer just science fiction thanks to this engineering prodigy: Luckey started developing his own head-mounted VR displays when he was still in high school, and was in college when he created the first prototype of a consumer-priced VR headset called the Oculus Rift. "You put it on," says Luckey, "and you feel like you're inside of the game, rather than looking at it on a screen."

Endorsements from game industry icons including Valve's Gabe Newell and id Software's John Carmack helped Luckey raise $2.4 million in a 2012 Kickstarter campaign. (Carmack was so impressed, he even left id to work for Luckey as his CTO). The year-old company has raised over $91 million from venture capitalists, employs 50 people, and has released an early version of the device to software developers, who are already showing off some innovative VR games and applications. Consumers should be able to buy their own headsets – which initially will work only with PC and mobile games – for a goal price of $300 sometime later this year.

Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus VR

Other members of our 30 Under 30 in Games include Maria Alegre, co-founder of Chartboost, a gaming-focused ad platform for mobile games; Alexander Bruce, designer of the innovative first-person puzzle-platform game "Antichamber"; Anthony Burch, creator of the web video series "Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin?" and lead writer of Gearbox's Borderlands 2; Terry Cavanagh, a prolific designer of smart, often experimental games like VVVVVV, At A Distance and Super Hexagon; Brian Cho, a partner and video game investor at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz; Jessie Coombs, a senior producer at Microsoft Studios, who has worked on games including Halo Reach and Gears of War: Judgment; and Matthew Davis and Justin Ma, co-founders of Subset Games and co-creator of the hit PC game FTL: Faster Than Light, a real-time spaceship simulator.

Also on the list: Zach Gage, designer of mobile games including SpellTower, Ridiculous Fishing, and Lose/Lose; Alexander Garfield, creator of Evil Geniuses, the world's leading professional video gaming team; John Graham, creator of Humble Bundle Inc, whose downloadable collections of games had a huge impact on developers and publishers; Keith Guerrette, who heads up the visual effects team for Sony Computer Entertainment's Naughty Dog Studios; Stephanie Harvey, a game designer at Ubisoft Montreal, also well known to the outside world as a professional gamer; Justin Ignacio, known to gamers as "TheGunRun," who helps keep thousands of simultaneous video streams running on the e-Sports web site Twitch; Tom Jubert, a game writer whose work includes both critically acclaimed indie titles and franchise games from major publishers; Ludwig Kietzmann, editor-in-chief of Joystiq.com, one of the world's most visited video game news sites; Andrew Kim, an industrial designer at Microsoft helping create the next generation of Xbox products; and Jaedong Lee, one of the world's most successful professional gamers, nicknamed "The Tyrant" and "The Legend Killer.”

We also honor David Louche, known online as "aniwey," the designer of Candybox and Candybox 2, a series of unexpectedly complex role-playing adventures; Matthew Malone, a designer for Branch who helped create the OUYA, a $99 Android-powered video game console; Alexander Martin, known to fans as "droqen," the designer of Starseed Pilgrim; Matt Nava, who created the look of critically-acclaimed games including Flower, now creative director of a studio called Giant Squid; John Nesky, who designed the avatar and camera interactions for the award-winning game Journey; Sean Plott, best known by the alias "Day[9]," a professional gamer turned broadcaster and one of the biggest names in the world of e-sports; Amir Rao, co-founder of Supergiant Games and co-creator of the action role-playing video game Bastion; Matt Thorson, who created the archery combat platform game TowerFall; Greg Wohlwend, a prolific independent developer of games including Solipskier, Puzzlejuice, Fig. 8 and Hundreds; Justin Wong, director of the partner program for video-streaming web site Twitch; and Davey Wreden, who wrote the critically acclaimed indie game "The Stanley Parable."

To see all of the members of this year’s list of 30 Under 30 in Games alongside honorees from fifteen other important industries, check out Forbes' special report: 30 Under 30.

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